November-December Books

#68: Rules of an Engagement

Nice fluffy Regency romance. I liked it. The heroine was unconventional, which is always a plus.

#69: Bone Dance

As I mentioned to my friend Chris, this disappointed me. I respect Emma Bull as a writer, but I felt like there was too much left unsaid. Also, there is one point in the novel where, as a reader, I felt extremely cheated.

#70: Restoree

Oh, my. It’s hard to believe I enjoyed this book so much when I was 16. Well, then I think about the Twilight craze, and forgive myself. My real problem is that I wanted the heroine to be more of a feminist. She starts out that way– before the novel starts, she’s rebelled against her parents and struck out on her own, living in New York City and getting an entry-level job at an ad agency. Then the novel happens and, as she falls in love with the hero (who, literally, rules and saves an entire planet), she becomes more and more passive until her only contributions to the plot are to bring food to the heroes, observe everyone, and bear witness to a crime that happened in the first 8 pages of the book. This was a library ebook that I checked out and read on my Nook.

#71: Gauntlgrym

I wanted to not like this one, because it’s a Forgotten Realms book, written by R.A. Salvatore, and a Drizzt book. I mean, I figure after 50 books, it’s time to retire the overly-powerful, often-imitated drow ranger superhero. Instead, I surprised myself by really enjoying the novel. Not necessarily because of Drizzy… er, I mean Drizzt. That’s a character who probably needs to retire, just because he’s too world-weary and too powerful to continue to be compelling. But the dwarves in this novel really came to life for me, and I admit I genuinely enjoyed their overwrought dialogue and exploits. Salvatore also writes fight scenes really well, so it was also educational from a craft perspective. Another library ebook.

#72: Dead(ish)

More of a novella, this is a short, peppy story about a ghost who haunts her ex-boyfriend and hires a private investigator to get enough evidence against him to put him in jail. Again, there were moments where I was caught feeling like the author was cheating the audience, but she managed, through quick point-of-view shifts, to hide it pretty well.

#73: Like a Wisp of Steam

An anthology of 5 steampunk erotica stories. On average, I’d say they were “pretty good” but not orgasmic. They were, however, highly entertaining the way Victorian-set erotica really can be. I mean, we are talking about a world with corsets and exciting underthings, after all.

Abandoned: Tahn: A Novel. For overuse of God. Even a Christian would have trouble with the preachiness of this book.